Having finished QualityLand (the dark edition, of course) I am surprised. Positively surprised. It is easy and fun to read, I understand why everyone praises it so highly and why my dad persistently urged me to read it.

Contrary to popular opinion, I would declare QualityLand a satire and not so much a dystopic novel. Marc-Uwe Kling has a very keen sense of language and he incorporates a number of great, innovative ideas with which he transforms our present-day world into the near-future society of QualityLand, where everyone is just a notch above our current level of being technology-crazy. The story is lovely in its simplicity: the Everyman Peter Arbeitsloser (which translates to Peter Jobless, I presume?) wants to return an item he neither ordered, nor wants to have, but which the algorithms in charge (because algorithms have basically taken over) refuse to take back, since they insist that Peter really wishes to have it, even though he himself doesn’t know it. And machines don’t make mistakes, right? Speaking of Peter Arbeitsloser; the idea of giving everyone the name of his/her parents’ job as a surname – *chef’s kiss*.

The world of QualityLand is constructed slowly and carefully, meaning that there is A LOT of exposition. I would even go this far and say that the first half of the book is mainly exposition setting up everything in order for the plot to be able evolve in the second half. But I really enjoyed reading the first half, it is funny, witty and even a bit scary once you start thinking about it. And once the plot starts, boy, does it move quickly. Overall good and smart writing with a lot of enjoyable German humour (when an Austrian says „German humour“ it is usually not a compliment, but in this case most of the jokes were indeed funny).

It is a matter of taste, but I did not enjoy the ending, I think it is a little rushed (especially in comparison to the slow pace in the beginning) and overloaded, because Kling felt the need to tie everything together in the last eleven pages, including the meta-level epilogue, which in my opinion was unnecessary.

My only real point of more or less objective criticism is that some explanatory passages were done really poorly. By that I specifically mean the parts in which most theories and principles that are used / parodied in the book (like Peter‘s Principle, game theory, Turing Test etc.) were explained in monologic straight up narration. You get the fact that Kling did quite a bit of research anyway by reading QualityLand and I hate it, when authors just throw a summary of what they found out about a certain topic directly in your face.

But apart from that, QualityLand is light fiction, that greatly entertains you while dealing with some serious underlying problems of our present-day world at the same time.

Hi, everybody!

I haven't posted anything in quite some time due to being busy af. I had to meet a couple of deadlines, I was also visiting my familiy for the first time in over two months (thanks to the whole Coronoa mayhem), I had to take my cat to the vet – you know, life happed.

Anyway. I am still reading Nostromo by Conrad and I am still a little sceptical about it, although it is growing on me (more on that in another post), but I had a four-hour train ride yesterday during which it was raining most of the time and I just was in the mood for something less serious. So I started reading Qualityland by Marc-Uwe Kling (additionally, my dad is a fan of it and he has been urging me to read it for the past 1,5 years) and I do not regret it – you are in for a fun review as soon as I am finished with it.

Book source ~ Purchased

Leonard Stark hasn’t left his house in years. He’s tried. Boy, has he tried, but he just can’t do it. Christmas is nearly upon him when one morning he sees a figure on his old porch couch. Bundled up against the cold and rain he doesn’t know if the person is a man or woman, young or old. When he hears a knock at his door he panics and tells whoever it is to go away. But the voice is persistent. She (he’s pretty sure it’s a she) pleads to use his bathroom before moving along. Leonard finally gives in and it’s the biggest step he’s taken in a long time. Little does he know that it’s Eve’s biggest step, too.

This is quick read that will both wring your heart and warm it. Leonard and Eve have been through some pretty rough stuff, but their tentative friendship grows in a very short time. Maybe because they both desperately needed someone to believe in them. Sometimes, it only takes a small gesture to pull someone back from an edge you would never have known about and everyone’s story is worth hearing.

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

A pretty informative read on what’s going on in our brains, I found this book to be a good introduction to the topic: it doesn’t go too deep into complex science, but it also provides enough to be interesting even if, like me, you already know a little. What I already knew was there, so that’s consolidated knowledge for me, and what I didn’t, well, now I have new things to mull over.

On top of anatomy, the author also covers current (and past) research about the brain—apparently, there was a time when people found it OK to experiment on dogs’ brains without anaesthetising the poor pups—as well as brain chemistry and pharmacology. Several case studies, usually found at the beginning of each chapter, illustrate each topic, the latter ranging from language to memory, from addiction to fear, and more. The part about sleep especially interested me, due to my own difficulties with that—I knew that I shouldn’t drink coffee too late in the day (in my family, we used to say “never after 1 pm”) but now I also know that it’s because of caffeine’s long half-life, and putting numbers on this definitely helps enforce the point.

One mistake I made with this book, though, was to not always read it at the right moments. So don’t be like me, don’t read it right before bed when you’re already half-asleep. It won’t do it justice. (I basically had to read a couple of chapters again the next day to make sure I’d get everything. It’s not complicated writing or concepts, but that’s on a fully awake brain, right!)

Conclusion: A strong “introduction”, that actually also has good nuggets for people who have some knowledge on the topic.

When you boil it down, QualityLand is simply the epic tale of a man trying to return something he didn't order (and doesn't want) to an online retailer. Peter Jobless's tale involves a paranoid hacker, a blackmail scheme, an armed stand-off, a smitten sex-bot, a TV news panel show, a revolutionary tablet computer, swaying a presidential election, and a revival of interest in the films of Jennifer Aniston. We've all been there, right?

There's no way I could describe the plot in a way to do it justice—so we'll stick with the broad sweep. Before much gets underway story-wise, there's a lot of set up required. When the dominoes start to fall in earnest, they go quickly. But so much of the book is devoted to setting them up, establishing/explaining the culture, government and everyday life of the QualityLand's citizenry.

Here's the best part about the set-up time: it's totally worth it, and the way the dominoes are being placed is enjoyable/entertaining enough that even if the results were duds, I wouldn't really have minded all that much. The icing on the cake is that the plot works well (we've all seen too many examples of elaborate worldbuilding that accompany a story that's not worth it).

This is a world given over to algorithms, a world where the algorithms of various retail entities know so much about their customers that they no longer have to wait for a customer to order something to provide it—no, the algorithm will know what you're going to want and will deliver it before you know you want it.

Not only are all your possessions provided for you in this manner, the algorithm decides what kind of career you will pursue, but it will also guide and govern your romantic life, your health care, and so on and so on.

It even gets into politics—so much so that during the course of this novel, there is an android running for president—because, we're told repeatedly (mostly by the candidate), "machines don't make mistakes." An android chief of state (the theory goes) will better all of society because the android will know what's needed.

At each step of the way, as each aspect of society is introduced and explained, as each character appears for the first time, it's done in a way that will make you grin, chuckle, or laugh. The world is so zany, so...out there—and yet, completely recognizable as a natural progression of our world/society/culture.

Unlike so many satirical novels, the ending of this novel doesn't get out of control. The plotlines come to natural conclusions and resolve in a satisfying way.

The characters—from the Everyman Peter Jobless, to the campaign manager (she can give Malcolm Tucker some lessons on the use of words as weapons), to the history teacher's trouble-maker daughter (in-person to public officials or in online comments), to Peter's collection of electronic companions—are wonderful. They're a little better rounded than I'm used to in satires.

There's a wonderful playful quality to the language, making the whole thing a barrelful of fun. I'm assuming that Searle captured the feel of the original in that, and did a great job. There's an acronym that's used a couple of times, that I think may be funny in the original, but doesn't translate into anything (at least as far as I can see). That one thing aside, the ability to make a translated text feel so natural, so easy is no small feat.

QualityLand is a fun read t's a thought-provoking read, it is (occasionally) a frightening read as you realize how close to this dystopia we are (and how fast we're running to it). I strongly recommend this one.